About Art
- Who needs it? What purpose does it serve? Is it just decoration to cover some of the sterility of a life created by the hand of man? Or is all that is created by the hand of man in some way art? Man, it seems, is as capable of aesthetic crimes as he is of violence in any other form. But he is also capable of sublime achievements.
- A work of art is a moment in time made of many moments in the life of the artist. The creation of a work of art should be neither easy nor cheap. Most art today is exactly that. A performer says, "Look at me." An artist says, "Look at this." Whatever "this" is must be worth looking at and must be transformative. I see so much that is simply angry, cynical, or just plain stupid. Every generation thinks it invented the wheel and thinks it has something new to say that has never been said before. But the truth is that each generation is now less well-educated, less aware of history, and less capable of new thought and original ideation than the one before.
Art in America (The Magazine); 18.00" x 28.00"; Oil on Panel
This painting refers to my sense of loss about contemporary art. I have an unfortunate four-year subscription to this magazine. I'll probably renew it at the end of that term because I feel that it's important to keep visible the huge failures in art that it represents.
The background is a transliteration of Hieronymus Bosch's painting of hell. The two girls are a reference to Victorian paper dolls, and they, in turn, draw attention to the pig (the silk purse that somehow could never become what it hoped to become).
There is a very tragic brand of literacy in art writing these days — what I call "artspeak" — that tries to legitimize the most pathetic work in the name of new, brilliant, cutting-edge, and relevant. None of it is true, but if it appears in a major publication, then the emperor actually must be wearing something beautiful over what the plebian populace sees only as nakedness.
The art itself is mostly installation, performance, conceptual, and simply bad. There are a few islands of relief within this morass, but for the most part, there is neither skill nor art. As Gertrude Stein said, "There's no there there."
The background is a transliteration of Hieronymus Bosch's painting of hell. The two girls are a reference to Victorian paper dolls, and they, in turn, draw attention to the pig (the silk purse that somehow could never become what it hoped to become).
There is a very tragic brand of literacy in art writing these days — what I call "artspeak" — that tries to legitimize the most pathetic work in the name of new, brilliant, cutting-edge, and relevant. None of it is true, but if it appears in a major publication, then the emperor actually must be wearing something beautiful over what the plebian populace sees only as nakedness.
The art itself is mostly installation, performance, conceptual, and simply bad. There are a few islands of relief within this morass, but for the most part, there is neither skill nor art. As Gertrude Stein said, "There's no there there."
In the '60s, a popular concept was "Art is dead." Apparently, the educational system eventually came to believe it because, by the time my own children were in school, art had become an elective that was offered only on a limited basis. It had become a crafts class with poorly trained teachers. Often, I've encountered teachers who had gotten a few courses in college while working toward an education degree and who had no grasp of how to look at or talk about art. For generation after generation, art has, indeed, become dead. "Hooking up" is the new intimacy. The television is rife with advertising for renewed potency, not because the culture has become impotent, but because passion has gone out of much of life. The average person is assaulted with a constant stream of images and has no idea how to look at those images intelligently, how to process visual information, or how to discriminate between the good and the bad and between the common and the extraordinary.
One idea I often refer to is what I call "aesthetic atheism." This is not believing in the aesthetic imperative as part of the core nature of being. There is, at best, an aesthetic liberalism and an aesthetic conservatism. The aesthetic liberal embraces all things art and is willing to support public funding for any endeavor, regardless of quality, simply because it fits into a politically correct framework. The aesthetic conservative, on the other hand, dismisses any new idea, form, color system, architecture, or practice. Both are, at their core, aesthetic atheists because the driving factor isn't art but the consumption of art. Designers tell them how to see, what to value, and what suits an environment that is sterile and aesthetically hopeless.
On the Home page, I mention three teachers: Stuck, Albers, and Mariani. Franz von Stuck was a Symbolist painter as well as a sculptor, engraver, architect, and teacher. His life was spent in a passionate embrace, a real life lived without time wasted on the things that populate our culture: television, video games, empty jobs, empty relationships, and the quest for always more because the culture says enough is never enough.
Josef Albers was also a teacher, and his paintings deal primarily with color theory. He taught at The Bauhaus until Hilter's myopia shut it down. In 1963, he published The Interaction of Color, a somewhat dry but pivotal work that, along with his paintings, influenced much of what happened in art in the '60s. While he had been a student of Stuck, his work shows that influence only to a very trained eye. Few people know that Jackson Pollock was a student of Thomas Hart Benton. The apple may indeed fall very far from the tree.
My own aesthetic father, Vincent Mariani, studied under Albers at Yale. Vince may, at one point, have been the single most important influence that has ever driven the direction I've chosen to follow in life and in art. Passion is a gift given by one person to another. It's an infection that spreads by contact. Without passion, life can easily become rote and even meaningless.
Early in his career, Vince was strongly influenced by another of his teachers at Yale, Rico LeBrun. He once showed me some of his older work. It was all overblown heroic figures, much like the work we see in LeBrun's drawings. The work he was creating when I was his student was abstract and beautiful, consisting of paintings in oils using color and cosmic inferences. Later, he painted what he called "light wands," thin, tall panels with pure colors interacting in a narrow space. His even later work was in holography and may now be what he is most recognized for.
I feel fortunate to have studied while he worked in oils. While I'm very fond of drawing and printmaking, painting in oils is the form that speaks most strongly to me. My education was classical instead of the poor offerings found in today's art curriculums. I've returned to the UT Art School over the years, and in those visits, I observed the gradual loss of real knowledge in favor of "free expression" and empty rewards for badly made work. I guess I was watching the gradual death of art after all.
One idea I often refer to is what I call "aesthetic atheism." This is not believing in the aesthetic imperative as part of the core nature of being. There is, at best, an aesthetic liberalism and an aesthetic conservatism. The aesthetic liberal embraces all things art and is willing to support public funding for any endeavor, regardless of quality, simply because it fits into a politically correct framework. The aesthetic conservative, on the other hand, dismisses any new idea, form, color system, architecture, or practice. Both are, at their core, aesthetic atheists because the driving factor isn't art but the consumption of art. Designers tell them how to see, what to value, and what suits an environment that is sterile and aesthetically hopeless.
On the Home page, I mention three teachers: Stuck, Albers, and Mariani. Franz von Stuck was a Symbolist painter as well as a sculptor, engraver, architect, and teacher. His life was spent in a passionate embrace, a real life lived without time wasted on the things that populate our culture: television, video games, empty jobs, empty relationships, and the quest for always more because the culture says enough is never enough.
Josef Albers was also a teacher, and his paintings deal primarily with color theory. He taught at The Bauhaus until Hilter's myopia shut it down. In 1963, he published The Interaction of Color, a somewhat dry but pivotal work that, along with his paintings, influenced much of what happened in art in the '60s. While he had been a student of Stuck, his work shows that influence only to a very trained eye. Few people know that Jackson Pollock was a student of Thomas Hart Benton. The apple may indeed fall very far from the tree.
My own aesthetic father, Vincent Mariani, studied under Albers at Yale. Vince may, at one point, have been the single most important influence that has ever driven the direction I've chosen to follow in life and in art. Passion is a gift given by one person to another. It's an infection that spreads by contact. Without passion, life can easily become rote and even meaningless.
Early in his career, Vince was strongly influenced by another of his teachers at Yale, Rico LeBrun. He once showed me some of his older work. It was all overblown heroic figures, much like the work we see in LeBrun's drawings. The work he was creating when I was his student was abstract and beautiful, consisting of paintings in oils using color and cosmic inferences. Later, he painted what he called "light wands," thin, tall panels with pure colors interacting in a narrow space. His even later work was in holography and may now be what he is most recognized for.
I feel fortunate to have studied while he worked in oils. While I'm very fond of drawing and printmaking, painting in oils is the form that speaks most strongly to me. My education was classical instead of the poor offerings found in today's art curriculums. I've returned to the UT Art School over the years, and in those visits, I observed the gradual loss of real knowledge in favor of "free expression" and empty rewards for badly made work. I guess I was watching the gradual death of art after all.
Franz von Stuck
Josef Albers and His Work
Vincent Mariani
The Ecclesiast said, "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no height, nor breadth, nor depth in the grave wither thou goest." Mr. Miyagi said, "Wax on. Wax off." If you aren't living, you're already dead. Your life would have been a meaningless blip on the cosmic radar. Art is life, and life is art. We all have that as a basic part of our being. This is what is no longer taught in schools because now the educational goal is to create a productive citizen — a good worker that fits into the economic machine suffering neither from great wealth nor from great poverty. Lao Tzu said it best (paraphrased), "In order to govern the people, empty their minds and fill their bellies." How true.
Art is the sum total of the human spirit. It shouldn't be surprising that in order to write, one must first read; in order to paint, one must first learn what the great masters knew; in order to create, one must first master creation. Only God could create something out of nothing, and I think even that creative force was driven by need.
I'm adding a few links below to show you parts of my own life that, sometimes, have great significance. I'm loosely aligned with a group of artists under the umbrella nominative of Neosymbolism. A talented and reliable member of this group is Stanislav Grezdo, who is a curator at the UIMA in Chicago. Another is Tom Besson, whose work speaks powerfully to his personal life experience.
The Blanton appears here because it is our local resource for exposure to real and great art. I feel that it's the responsibility of every person in the area to become involved and to support such an institution. For a mere $60 a year, you can become part of something important in combating the cultural degradation that is spreading through all facets of human endeavor. I had the good fortune to meet their curator of prints and drawings, Francesca Consagra. She revealed a great intellectual curiosity and a passion for art that is rarely seen these days. The Blanton is people, not buildings. And their concern is for our spiritual welfare.
Art is the sum total of the human spirit. It shouldn't be surprising that in order to write, one must first read; in order to paint, one must first learn what the great masters knew; in order to create, one must first master creation. Only God could create something out of nothing, and I think even that creative force was driven by need.
I'm adding a few links below to show you parts of my own life that, sometimes, have great significance. I'm loosely aligned with a group of artists under the umbrella nominative of Neosymbolism. A talented and reliable member of this group is Stanislav Grezdo, who is a curator at the UIMA in Chicago. Another is Tom Besson, whose work speaks powerfully to his personal life experience.
The Blanton appears here because it is our local resource for exposure to real and great art. I feel that it's the responsibility of every person in the area to become involved and to support such an institution. For a mere $60 a year, you can become part of something important in combating the cultural degradation that is spreading through all facets of human endeavor. I had the good fortune to meet their curator of prints and drawings, Francesca Consagra. She revealed a great intellectual curiosity and a passion for art that is rarely seen these days. The Blanton is people, not buildings. And their concern is for our spiritual welfare.